IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Romney mocks climate change, while Obama doesn't, as the Democratic National Convention gets underway; Energy company CEO pushes for a price on carbon(!); Midwest drought now coming for your popcorn; PLUS: Speaking of 'popping' - Hurricane Isaac recovery, now with dead rats! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Recent scientific evidence suggests a link between the destructive power (or intensity) of hurricanes and higher ocean temperatures, driven in large part by global warming. With rapid population growth in coastal regions placing many more people and structures in the path of these tropical cyclones there is a much greater risk of casualties, property damage, and financial hardship when these storms make landfall.

This is both a shameful and shameless attack. It’s shameful because global warming is the gravest preventable threat to our children’s health and well-being — and because Romney said it in Tampa, which is among the U.S. cities most threatened by global warming and sea level rise.

Over the past four years, the Republican Party has undergone a major shift in its approach to energy and environmental issues. Global warming has disappeared entirely from the party’s list of concerns. Clean energy has become an afterthought. Fossil fuels loom larger than ever. And one way to track this shift is to compare the party’s 2008 and 2012 platforms.

What Romney argues is a classic false choice: the idea that we must either choose to save the environment or put people to work. It’s the sort of argument that lets polluters squat in poor communities, insisting that they be allowed to do as they wish or they’ll take their jobs elsewhere. It’s a choice that need not be made, as demonstrated by green jobs and the burgeoning industries built around renewables and efficiency and sustainability.

But that’s not actually what Romney was arguing. He was arguing that Obama is a weirdo who cares more about dolphins than Americans.

The Democrats’ official platform expected to be approved at the party's national convention on Tuesday calls for an international deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The platform says Democrats will pursue efforts to combat climate change through regulations and market solutions, setting up a continued battle with Republicans who argue such steps could hold back the economy.

We know that global climate change is one of the biggest threats of this generation – an economic, environmental, and national security catastrophe in the making. We affirm the science of climate change, commit to significantly reducing the pollution that causes climate change, and know we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits.

It’s going to be pretty hard for the GOP to walk back from the unbelievably stupid and regressive position the Romney campaign has taken on climate. As the news from the Arctic gets more shocking by the day, there is a rumor that Romney will try to soften that line in coming weeks, but he’s repeated the “Obama promised to make the seas recede” line now on the campaign trail – and we do have video technology.

The question a lot of folks have been asking is whether Obama will seize this opening to further cast the Republicans as the anti-science party. From here, it looks like we’re not going to see a major change in tone before the election.

[T]he truth is you’ve got more at stake in this election than just about anybody... The decisions we make as a country on big issues like the economy and jobs and taxes and education and energy and war and climate change — all these decisions will directly affect your life in very personal ways.
...Denying climate change won't make it stop.

In the not-too-distant future, people are going to be amazed that anybody ever thought Labor Day signified the unofficial end of summer.
...
“According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh.

And this could happen even sooner since, “actual GHG emissions over the early 21st century have exceeded those projected in the SRES scenario used here, suggesting that our results could provide a conservative projection of the timing of permanent emergence of an unprecedented heat regime.”

It could be a week before firefighters can contain a 3,600-acre blaze in the Angeles National Forest because of high temperatures and rugged terrain in thick brush that hasn't burned in a couple of decades.

Conventional fruits and vegetables did have more pesticide residue, but the levels were almost always under the allowed safety limits, the scientists said.... Similarly, organic meat contained considerably lower levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria than conventionally raised animals did, but bacteria, antibiotic-resistant or otherwise, would be killed during cooking.

Israel has developed some of the world’s most advanced solar energy equipment and enjoys a nearly endless supply of sunshine, but when it comes to deploying large-scale solar technology at home, the country remains in the dark ages.

Warming global temperatures and melting polar ice caps have helped a trio of explorers go where few men have gone before...through the M’Clure Strait in northern Canada, a decreasingly ice-packed route through the famed Northwest Passage.

The international three-man crew — an American, Canadian and Swede — claim to have piloted the first sailboat to do so.

A union asked Ohio and federal labor officials on Wednesday to investigate whether a company violated federal wage and hour laws when it shuttered its coal mine to host a campaign event for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney....A Secret Service spokesman on Wednesday said it did not request the mine’s closure during Romney’s visit.

The Obama administration has cleared another hurdle for Shell to drill in Alaska's Arctic waters --- the second in as many days --- changing the company's air pollution limits so its drill ship can operate in the Chukchi Sea.

Without further action to lower emissions of heat-trapping gases, the planet is set to warm by 2.6 to 4.1 degrees Celsius, the project, run by three European research groups, said today in a report released in Bangkok, where the UN is holding a week of informal discussions. That level of warming exceeds the 2-degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) ceiling that UN envoys have set as a global goal.

Human activity is affecting Earth in many ways, but a new study suggests that continued population growth and its impact on climate and ecology could trigger a more profound chain reaction of effects within little more than a decade.

Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.

It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
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"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there's no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. "If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there's been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political," he said.
...Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it."